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William Rodriguez
This is a new article. As such is has been set to unassessed. It is classified as a stub, and categories require improvement. Category:Content William Rodríguez was a janitor at the North Tower of the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001 attacks and was in the basement of the North Tower when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the building. After the attacks he received several awards for heroism for helping in the evacuation of many survivors. The Birmingham Mail said about Rodriguez: "He bravely led firefighters up the stairs, unlocking doors as they climbed and helping hundreds of survivors" and The Lancashire Telegraph added: "He then went back into the building in a bid to rescue his friends at the top of the tower, on the 106th floor. But he kept finding others who needed his help as well." Rodriguez became prominent in the Latino community for helping to institute an economic amnesty program for victims of 9/11 who were undocumented workers. In 2004 Rodriguez unsuccessfully sued President Bush and 155 others in federal court alleging Bush's complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Subsequently, Rodriguez traveled around talking about conspiracy theories, his experiences on 9/11, Motivational lectures and Disaster Management. The Herald newspaper of Glasgow characterized him as "the poster boy for a movement currently sweeping the globe… the 9/11 Truth Campaign." He titled his website "911keymaster", appearing on TV and having himself photographed frequently with a 'master key' to the World Trade center, http://www.goodkarmapr.com/press%20releases3/images/WILLIAM-WITH-KEY.gif which, he has alleged on BBC and Dutch TV and C-Span, saved hundreds of lives. He also used the title "Last Man Out", touring in the UK and the USA with that phrase. Rodriguez has also employed the "Last Survivor of the World Trade Center" slogan.http://www.william911.com/ He claimed in federal court documents that he single-handedly rescued fifteen persons. His website william911.com more modestly puts it "helped fifteen (15) persons from the WTC to safety." Newspapers articles claimed that he raised 122 million dollars for the victims of 9/11. Biography WTC janitor Rodriguez moved to New York from Puerto Rico and, according to the Internet article linked above, he "found himself a small fish in the big pond of New York magicians." He took a day job as a custodian at the World Trade Center. The article goes on to say that Rodriguez's show business aspirations fell by the wayside when his responsibilities for cleaning the office of Governor Mario Cuomo at the WTC expanded to include organizing Governor Cuomo's press conferences, and that after Cuomo left office in 1994, Rodriguez was re-assigned to cleaning the windowless emergency staircases of the North Tower, where he remained until September 11, 2001. William would stick with that job through the late nineties' period of unprecedented economic prosperity and opportunity for many. 9/11 attacks Rodriguez said he usually clocked in at 8:00 a.m. and rode an elevator to the 106th floor, where Hispanic employees of the Windows on the World restaurant fed him a free breakfast. On 9/11, however, he was half an hour late and so reported directly to a basement office of his employer, American Building Maintenance. On 9/11, Rodriguez told CNN that shortly before the plane hit the tower he was in the basement when: }} Rodriguez's early accounts repeatedly mentioned a large fireball that shot down the elevator shafts and exploded through the doors, causing serious burn injuries to a man who happened to be standing in front of one of the freight elevator doors. This was consistent with similar reports by numerous other witnesses who saw fireballs erupting and blowing out elevator doors and burning people. sections 2.4 and 3.4 In September 2002, Rodriguez said in an CNN interview: He did not identify the name of the victim in this interview , but he did identify the name of the victim as Mr. Felipe David (a native of Honduras, working for the American catering company Aramark) in several other interviews . Mr. David was released after spending 10 weeks recovering in the hospital; first in the New York Weill Cornell Medical Center burn unit, and then in Mount Sinai Medical Center's rehab program. He had suffered third degree burns covering 40% if his upper body from jet fuel he encountered while escaping from the basement of 1 World Trade Center. }} At that same NIST meeting, however, Rodriguez told investigators that he was "the last survivor pulled from the rubble". In fact, there were at least 18 survivors pulled from the rubble of the North Tower long after Rodriguez walked out of the building unharmed. The last survivor was Jenelle Guzman-McMillan, who was rescued some 26 hours later at approximately 12:30 p.m. on September 12, 2001. pt 2 Though Rodriguez' October 2004 lawsuit Rodriguez v. Bush alleges that bombs were planted in the sub-basement and the Twin Towers brought down by controlled demolition, no claim is made there that Rodriguez witnessed any explosives or incendiary devices himself. Nor are any of Rodriguez' claimed 14 corroborating witnesses named or quoted--though the Complaint quotes dozens of others. Of the 27 witnesses Rodriguez claims he offered to the 9/11 Commission, which witnesses the Commission allegedly refused to interview and not one of them was quoted or identified in the lawsuit. None of the fifteen persons alleged in the first paragraph of the suit to have been "single-handedly rescued" by Rodriguez were identified either. By August 17, 2007, after more than two years of telling his story to enthralled audiences, he told C-Span: }} He claimed that he used a master key to let people out from behind locked emergency exit doors, saving hundreds of people, and that he turned down Hollywood movie deals worth millions and book contracts "from every publisher" because he "wanted to maintain his integrity." Rodriguez also claimed to have seen hijacker Mohand al-Shehri scoping out the building prior to the attacks, in June 2001. A Daily News article says he told the FBI and the 9/11 Commission that he recognized the man after a brief, chance encounter months prior to the terrorist attacks. "It is believed that American Airlines Flight 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta cased New York City targets, including the Diamond District, but Rodriguez may have given the 9/11 panel the first eyewitness testimony about a hijacker inside one of the towers before the terror strike. Rodriguez gave evidence to the 9/11 Commission. As was the case with the vast majority of the more than 1200 witnesses who gave evidence to the Commission, Rodriguez's evidence was not given in public and was not specifically itemized in the Commission Report. Of the 1200+ witnesses whose testimony was taken by the Commission, approximately 160 were conducted publicly. Rodriguez complains that his testimony never appeared in the Commission Report and that many of the survivors were not called to testify. However, the Commission acknowledges that its report is only a summary of the work that it did, and that it specifically cites only a fraction of the sources it consulted. It acknowledges that due to the scope of the events touching so many issues and organizations, it did not interview every knowledgeable person or find every relevant piece of paper, but that its report is a foundation for a better understanding of a landmark in the history of the United States. RICO lawsuit In October 2004, Rodriguez sued the President of the United States and 155 other parties, accusing them of complicity in the 9/11 attacks. His 237-page civil lawsuit included allegations pursuant to the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) against The United States Of America, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, George Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld,and numerous others, totaling 156 defendants in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. In his lawsuit, Rodriquez made hundreds of allegations including allegations that the Twin Towers were destroyed by means of "controlled demolitions;" that members of the were ordered, on instructions of the CIA, not to talk about it; that the FDNY conspired with Larry Silverstein to deliberately destroy 7WTC; that projectiles were fired at the Twin Towers from “pods” affixed to the underside of the planes that struck them; that FEMA is working with the US government to create “American Gulag” concentration camps which FEMA will run once the federal government’s plan to impose martial law is in place; that phone calls made by some of the victims, as reported by their family members, were not actually made but were "faked" by the government using "voice morphing" technology; that a missile, not American Airlines Flight 77, struck the Pentagon; that United Airlines Flight 93 was shot down by the U.S. military; that the defendants had foreknowledge of the attacks and actively conspired to bring them about; that the defendants engaged in kidnapping, arson, murder, treason, conspiracy, trafficking in narcotics, embezzlement, securities fraud, insider trading, identity and credit card theft, blackmail, trafficking in humans, and the abduction and sale of women and children for sex. In his Complaint, Rodriquez also alleged that he "single-handedly rescued fifteen persons from the WTC". The matter was transferred to the Southern District of New York on May 2, 2005. In January 2006, Rodriquez swore and filed a 51 page affidavit in opposition to a motion to dismiss, which reiterated and expanded upon his conspiracy allegations. On June 26, 2006, the court dismissed Rodriguez's claims against the USA, DHS, and FEMA, and gave Rodriguez until July 7, 2006 to show cause why his lawsuit should not be dismissed with respect to the other 153 defendants. Rodriguez failed to do so, and the court dismissed all of his claims against all of the remaining 153 defendants on July 17, 2006. Timeline June 2001: Janitor Claims to Witness Hijacker inside World Trade Center Janitor William Rodriguez, who has worked at the World Trade Center for 20 years, believes he sees Flight 175 hijacker Mohand Alshehri in one of the towers. Rodriguez is cleaning washrooms on the Trade Center’s concourse level one weekend, when a person he later believes to have been Alshehri approaches him and asks, “How many public bathrooms are in this area?” Rodriguez says he finds this “very strange.” After 9/11, he will recognize the man from newspaper photos as having been the suspected hijacker. He will say he is “very certain, I’ll give it 90 percent” that the man he’d seen was Alshehri. He will tell the FBI of this encounter, but will never hear back from them. FBI officials later say they have never heard of Rodriguez, but they do not discount his story. TELEGRAPH, 6/15/2004; MSNBC, 6/15/2004; NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, 6/15/2004 According to FBI and 9/11 Commission accounts, Mohand Alshehri has only recently entered the US, on May 28, 2001 (see April 23-June 29, 2001), though other reports suggest he was in the country several months earlier (see January or July 28, 2001). CONGRESS, 9/26/2002; (8:46 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Janitor Hears Explosion from WTC Basement William Rodriguez [Source: Publicity photo According to a WTC janitor, there is an explosion in the basement of the North Tower just before the plane hits up above. William Rodriguez has worked at the World Trade Center for 20 years, including the time of the 1993 bombing, and is responsible for cleaning three stairwells in the North Tower. He is talking to his supervisor in an office in the B-1 level in the basement when, he says, “I heard this massive explosion below, on level B-2 or 3.” He says, “The floor vibrated. We were all thrown upwards, then everyone in the office started screaming.” Then, “seconds later, there was another explosion way above, which made the building sway from side to side. And this, we later discovered, was the first plane hitting the North Tower on the 90th floor.” A man then runs into the office, shouting, “Explosion! Explosion!” The man, Felipe David, had been standing in front of a nearby lift when a fireball had burst from the lift shaft, severely burning him. Rodriguez will later question, “Now you tell me how an explosion from a jet liner could have burnt a man 90 floors down within seconds of impact?” The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will suggest that the basement explosion Rodriguez heard might have been caused by a fireball traveling from the aircraft down the central lift shaft. However, some time after hearing it, Rodriguez rescues two people trapped in a lift. He will therefore doubt NIST’s claim, saying that if it were true, “Why were the two people I rescued from the lift not burnt to death?” YORK MAGAZINE, 3/20/2006; WESTERN MORNING NEWS, 12/2/2006; HERALD (GLASGOW), 2/16/2007; ARGUS (BRIGHTON), 2/26/2007 Rodriguez also claims to have witnessed alleged hijacker Mohand Alshehri in the World Trade Center in June 2001 (see June 2001). Entity Tags: William Rodriguez, World Trade Center Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline (Between 8:50 a.m. and 9:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Janitor Hears Explosions and Other Strange Noises in North Tower After firefighters arrive at the North Tower, janitor William Rodriguez leads some of them up its stairs. Being one of only five people possessing a master key, he opens emergency exit doors as he goes up, allowing people to escape from the building. But between the tower’s 20th and 30th floors he hears a series of explosions. The source of these is unknown. Then, when he reaches the 33rd floor he hears what sounds like heavy equipment being dragged across the floor of the level above. He finds this puzzling, he later says, because the 34th floor is supposed to be empty and has been off limits for weeks due to a construction project. After he reaches the 39th floor, Rodriguez is ordered to turn back by the firefighters with him. He then hears the sound of the second plane hitting the WTC, at 9:03 a.m. Rodriguez also claims he heard an explosion from the North Tower’s basement just seconds before it was hit at 8:46 a.m. (see (8:46 a.m.) September 11, 2001). He will later be credited with saving many lives on 9/11, and be treated as a hero. SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/25/2004; WESTERN MORNING NEWS, 12/2/2006; HERALD (GLASGOW), 2/16/2007; ARGUS (BRIGHTON), 2/26/2007 Entity Tags: William Rodriguez, World Trade Center Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline References External links *Rodriguez v Bush Documents from PACER *US 9/11 group seeks aid of Dr M, June 13, 2006 *William Rodriguez-Lifetime Achievement Award *William Rodriguez, a 9-11 Survivor By Deanna Spingola *William Rodriguez, Rosie O'Donnell Radio Show Interview 11/6/2009 *William Rodriguez :: Official Website Category:Conspiracy theorists Category:Living people Category:Survivors of the September 11 attacks